How to “Leave Room” for Type

Lauren Panepinto

Thursday, April 25th, 2019

Hello everyone! This month I’m shooting down a myth many illustrators have about illustrating bookcovers, especially artists who are trying to break into publishing work: The idea that you need to leave “empty space” for type. Does type need to fit on a bookcover? Absolutely. But your illustration still has to work as a composition without any type on it. Why? because a strong composition under the type still affects the viewer more strongly than an unbalanced one.

Mistaken ideas about “leaving room for type” is one of the 3 big issues I see pop up in portfolio reviews of folks who are trying to break into bookcovers. For the record, the other 2 issues are 1) putting your own type over your illustration (never do that unless you want to be judged as a designer too) and 2) making every bookcover sample in your portfolio an automatic wraparound cover (wraparound covers are really 2 complete cover compositions linked by a spine, not one big horizontal cover — they’re rare and hard to do well. If you are trying to break in, do not make it even harder on yourself.)

Now let’s get back to the topic at hand: the difference between “empty” space and “less interesting” space. First off, let’s make sure we’re on the same page (pun intended) — there ARE bookcovers with illustrations on them that are not meant to be fully illustrated covers. There are covers with spot art, strips of art, insets of art, or frames of art. That is not the kind of cover I am talking about here. I am talking about fully-illustrated covers, where the illustration is covering at least 90% of the cover.

These are not the kinds of covers I mean, the illustration is too entwined into the design for the illustration to be expected to stand alone:

Here we purposely commissioned a framing illustration (common when evoking fairy-tales) and purposely left a gaping hole in the center for the title. Art by Rebecca Yanovskaya

Here we knew the covers were going to be primarily type-focused so we commissioned spot art (the figure and the shadow) that I then designed into the cover. Art by Greg Ruth.

Here the illustration of the figures and tower are also acting as a kind of framing device for the type. The process on these covers was especially collaborative between illustrator & designer. Art by Dominick Saponaro

These are the kinds of covers I mean — plenty of room for the type to overlay the illustration, but the illustration is a perfectly strong composition without the type. The areas that the type goes over still have function in the composition once you take the type off:

Art by Jeremy Wilson

Art by Thom Tenery

Art by Jaime Jones

When illustrating a full bleed cover, you always want your illustration to look like a complete, well-balanced composition even without type on it. There should be no “empty space” or glaring holes in the illustration. What there shouldbe is areas—ingeniously worked into the composition—that don’t have anything very important going on in them. And, ideally, these areas are of a continuous contrast and tone, so that you can either put light type or dark type over it (depending on the art) and have the type be clearly legible.

Art by Greg Manchess

Art by Daniel Dociu

Art by Chase Stone

Sometimes we cheat a bit and extend the top and/or bottom of an illustration to make more room…but the artist can crop it back down to show in their portfolio:

Art by Richard Anderson

Art by Stephan Martiniere

However a good designer will be able to work the type into even very complicated illustrations:

Art by Sparth

Art by Stephan Martiniere

Art by Ben Zweifel

Do you have a copy of Spectrum handy? Turn to the book section. None of the bookcover pieces have type on them. How many of those illustrations look like they’re off-balanced or have something obviously missing? Very few I bet.

When you’re thumbnailing, you really have to focus on the composition overall, and make sure that it holds up without the type. Once you send those thumbs or sketches in, the Art Director is already thinking about what they (or a Designer working with them) is going to do with the type. Not every Art Director works like this, but I often send the thumb back with rough type sketched on top, so the illustrator knows what area not to put anything important or intricate in that area.

Often the type style for a series is set in book 1, and then it’s very easy to know what kind of type is expected to show up on the rest of the series. A savvy illustrator will already be planning their composition with that style of type in mind. Again, some ADs will send back your thumb with the series type superimposed. Sometimes if the type style is set in stone for a series I give the artist a layered PSD version of their thumb with the type on a separate layer, so they can keep checking to make sure the piece is working with the established type.

When you put a bookcover illustration in your portfolio, it should stand up on its own, and you should display the non-type version as the main image. It’s totally acceptable to have the type-on finished version as a secondary image or thumbnail size, especially if it’s a well-known author or house, or if you’re particularly happy with how the type was designed over or into your illustration, but the hero on your site should be your work. That’s what Art Directors are looking at to judge whether your work would be a good fit for bookcovers.

P.S. Kelley McMorris has some great collections of more covers like this over at her blog

After 17 years designing and art directing book covers, Lauren Panepinto has worked in every publishing genre and collaborated with artists of all disciplines. As the Creative Director & Vice President of Orbit Books for the past ten years, she has been trying to merge the worlds of genre and commercial publishing and figure out what SFF publishing looks like in the present world of mainstream "geek" media.After an amateur career in punk rock show posters and 'zines, Lauren received a B.A. in Graphic Design from The School of Visual Arts. She has worked in fashion (Perry Ellis), television (MTV), and for boutique design firms, but found her calling in book publishing. She has worked at St. Martin's Press/Picador Books, at Doubleday/Random House, and now at Hachette Book Group, the parent company of Orbit.In addition to traveling all over the place giving portfolio reviews at conventions and writing for Muddy Colors, you can also find her art business education projects at www.DrawnandDrafted.com, and www.MakeYourArtWork.com, and all of her many projects and www.LaurenPanepinto.com.

Thanks Lauren, this was really useful, especially the section on complicated compositions “However a good designer will be able to work the type into even very complicated illustrations” Will really stick with me, That “Velocity Weapon” book has such good type design! Not like i’m planning to purposefully make my illustrations as complex as possible or anything :’)